Finish Line
by yutamiyu
Summary: Grasping for recalibration.


A/N: Fic is post-"Spin" with dialogue snippets and spoilers throughout. You have been warned.

He tucks his cane under his arm and shoves a hand into his pocket, fingers closing around the small worn leather case he placed there not ten minutes ago. Drawing it out in front of him, he flips open the top and pulls out two slender metallic pieces.

He grunts as he bends over awkwardly to bring his eyes as level to the lock as he can; he hasn't done this in a while, and the last time he did, he had full use of both legs. He slides one piece into the lock, then the other, and fiddles the two around, all the time keeping a watch over his shoulder for neighbors to walk in at an inopportune time. The cane digs painfully against his ribcage as it rolls with his movements.

He smirks as he finally hears the tell-tale "click" and he replaces the pieces into the case that has served him well for many years. He grabs hold of his cane and uses it to push the door open, limping inside and closing the door firmly behind him.

Normally, he sends Foreman to break and enter. But this...this is different.

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_You can't control your emotions._

_No. Just your actions._

------------------

Of course, he doesn't know about this conversation. How could he, really; he had taken the bike out, needing to clear his head.

He doesn't know that Cameron had sat in his chair not ten minutes after he'd left, and he doesn't know that she'd remained for hours after Wilson had walked out of his office. That she'd sat with that hideous floor lamp on, the only thing illuminating that corner of darkness in a mostly-empty hospital, staring at her reflection in a television that had been switched off hours before.

------------------

_You didn't do it, did you? You didn't sleep with him._

_I couldn't have lived with myself._

_You'd be surprised what you can live with._

------------------

He doesn't know about this one, either.

He doesn't know that around four a.m. she'd risen to her feet and taken small, fatigued steps to stand in front of his desk. He doesn't know that she'd run one slender finger over the red and gray tennis ball and rolled it around the coaster on which it was kept.

He doesn't know that she'd stepped out onto his balcony, staring up through the trees and imagining that she could see the stars while in the middle of an industrial mecca.

He doesn't know that she made a decision on that balcony. He doesn't know that she debated writing him a note, but ultimately decided against. He doesn't know that she took a sweeping glance around his office and let out a little sigh before pushing the glass door open and walking to her car.

All he knows is that employees don't just disappear.

------------------

Well, he amends, some do. Jimmy Hoffa springs to mind, certainly. Amelia Earhart. But employees like Allison Cameron didn't just run away. Not without notice--hell, not without _cause_. If she really wanted to leave, she would have shown up at his house again, wide-eyed and on the verge of tears yet somehow managing to maintain a strong façade. She would have told him.

He stands just inside of the entryway and looks around the open living room. His gaze runs over a small treadmill standing vigil in a faraway corner and the scent-memory of sweat and track-rubber briefly pricks at his nostrils before he wonders if she enjoys the solitude of the track as much as he once did.

Outside, the rumble of thunder sounds closer, and he briefly wonders if he left the top up on the Corvette.

He makes his way across the living room and under the almost-archway into her kitchen. He reaches out and pulls open her refrigerator door, sniffing distastefully at the contents he finds within. She has the basics--bread, milk--but he realizes at once that she has no food he can steal. Her fridge is filled with yogurt and fruit and girly healthy foods. No red meat in sight. He makes a mental note to get a burger later on.

Closing the refrigerator, he limps back into the living room and his eyes fall upon the small overly-cluttered wooden coffee table in front of her couch. Sitting down, he pulls the table closer to him and begins to push the papers aside, trying to hone in on a reason she would leave.

He snorts in amusement as his fingers pluck up a bright yellow Post-It note with the words "Call mom re: Christmas" scribbled hurriedly onto it, although he's not quite sure why he finds it funny. Sticking the note onto the nearby lampshade, he turns back to the oasis of papers and magazines spread across the surface of the table.

------------------

_I fell in love with my husband's best friend._

_We kind of clung to each other._

------------------

He knows he's found something when he stumbles across the opaque envelope with the cream-colored cards inside.

_You are cordially invited to witness the union of_

_CAROLINE ELIZABETH CARTER_

_and_

_JOSEPH ANDREW PARKER_

He doesn't read the rest; he doesn't have to. Because now his mind is on another matter; he's seen this name before. Rifling through the piles of papers, he finally unearths an unopened letter with Cameron's name and address written in a distinctly male hand.

The return address belongs to Joe Parker.

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_Near the end, I was at the hospital every day, and Joe would come by after work. We'd go for walks and try to talk each other through it._

_What happened to you, how can anyone go through that alone_

------------------

He opens her mail. He's not particularly proud of it, but at the moment, Allison Cameron and her abrupt disappearance is a puzzle he just can't put down.

He runs a quick gaze over the letter. The handwriting flows confidently, but around the end, it becomes stilted and hesitant, as though the writer--this "Joe"--had been hesitant to add those thoughts.

The first part of the letter is boring trivialities--the "how are you's" and the "it's been so long's" and "how's work treating you's." He skips over it to the jilted handwriting.

_I'm getting married, Allison. I know what you're probably thinking; how could a dedicated bachelor like me ever get married, right? We've sent you an invitation. I'm sorry I didn't tell you sooner._

_Please come. I want to see you again.  
_

He knows she didn't go to the wedding because the reply card is still in the invitation and she would have said something. Besides, the wedding was a week ago, and she was at work then.

He wants to know why she didn't go. He wants to know why she didn't open the letter. What was it about this Joe that she didn't want anything to do with him? He obviously had her address, so why didn't she send a reply?

He realizes that there is a large white book lying next to him. Upon further inspection, he realizes that it's a photo album. He uses his index finger to flip the cover open, and he sees a picture of Cameron and her husband. She's broken out into a beaming smile while his is more subdued.

He wonders if the guy was thinking about his cancer when the photographer took the picture, because he obviously wasn't thinking about his bride.

Another page and he's presented with a posing trio. Cameron and her husband and someone else. Was this the illustrious "Joe"? Joe of the opaque wedding invitation, Joe of the hesitant handwriting, Joe of the unopened letter?

Shaking his head, he closes the album and pushes himself off of her couch, wandering into her bedroom. Impeccable, as he would have expected it to have been. The bed was made (and flawlessly; not a wrinkle on the bedspread) and he had to resist the urge to jump on it just to mess it up. Her bureau is tidy and organized, and he's willing to bet even money that her closet is, too.

Her organizer is on her bedside table and he picks it up, flipping through the pages. There's nothing written for the three days that she's gone; whatever it was that caused her to leave hadn't been planned. As meticulous as he knew Allison Cameron to be, she would have made a note.

She also would have told him she was leaving, but that was an entirely different issue.

He flips forward a few days to see if there's a hit as to her whereabouts there. It's a long shot, but right now it's all he has. There; a circled number. It takes him a minute to realize that the date she's circled is his birthday.

He is momentarily taken aback; he doesn't quite know what to think. It wasn't without precedent, of course; she'd reminded him of his birthday the year before. But things were different, now; things had happened between the two of them. She'd said herself that she hated him; at the time, he had been more than willing to take her at her word.

But this pen-marking around the date of his birthday indicates that perhaps she had been hasty or untruthful with her words.

The circling evidences it, as does the book lying among a pile of wrapping paper in the corner. His name on a Post-It stuck to the front cover. _Foucault's Pendulum_. He already has a copy on his bookshelf, battered and dog-eared.

He puts the planner back on her bedside table and stares out of the window. Wherever she was, she didn't want to be found. He had broken into her apartment for nothing, and he was more than just a little angry at the fact.

He stands at her window, watching the rain fall outside. He doesn't know how long he's there; he's eventually broken out of his silent contemplation by the sound his cell phone ringing in his pocket.

He draws it out and stares at the caller I.D. Allison Cameron. Flipping the phone open, he demands, "Where the hell are you?"

------------------

_He cheated and won at a game._

------------------

He is met with only silence and the distant sound of rain on the other end of the line. Wherever she is, it's raining as well, and he thinks that it's fitting.

"...I'm sorry," she finally manages. Her voice is fatigued and strained and he wonders if she's been crying.

"Where are you?" he asks again, and while the strength of his demand has not lessened, the volume of his voice has.

"I went to the country," she says, and her voice is remorseful. "I'm sorry I didn't call...I needed to get away for a while."

"You should have run it by me," he chastises.

"It wasn't exactly premeditated," she offers weakly. Then, "I'll be back at work tomorrow morning. Not my smartest move, was it?" She is silent, and he isn't exactly sure why he's still on the phone.

"I wanted to see the stars," she finally says, and she is distant.

He says nothing, but instead limps to her pristine bed and sits. He stays on the phone, and he wonders why. He isn't even sure if she knows whether or not he's still listening, because she keeps talking to the white noise and the rain.

"I was invited to a wedding," she says. "It was last week. I had vacation time saved up, but I stayed at work." She is quiet for a moment, and he wonders if she can hear him breathing. "I haven't seen Joe since my husband died," she says. "I haven't spoken to him in years, and suddenly he's inviting me to his wedding. I couldn't do it," she continues, and her confession is strained. "I couldn't bring myself to see him being happy and normal when I couldn't be as well. Who wants a wreck of a girl at a wedding, right?"

She sniffs, and he's fairly certain that she's crying.

"I couldn't..." she continues, and sniffs again. "I just couldn't go. I didn't want to think about those bad times. And I didn't want to face the 'what-ifs.' He loved me," she says, "I think he might have. But my husband had just died--his best friend had just died--so how could I possibly acknowledge that? What kind of horrible person would I have been..." She breaks off, and now he knows she's crying, because she coughs a quiet and aching sob.

He is compelled to speak, an action which puzzles him later. Eyes fixed on the cover of _Foucault's Pendulum_, he asks, "What do you want me to tell you, Cameron?"

The connection crackles a bit, but he still hears her whispered, "...I'm sorry."

There is white noise between them, and he is comfortable with that. Finally, he scrubs a hand over his mouth and says, "Look. I don't do this. If you want someone to soothe you, to cater to your every whim, talk to Wilson. Or Chase. Fuck, Foreman; I don't care. You can dance around with them all night and never get anything done, and they'll let you do it. I don't work that way; I don't dance. I get things done. And for some reason I've taken complete leave of my senses because I'm still on the goddamn phone with you. So either tell me what's going on and come back to work, or do this with someone else, because I'm sick of playing."

He wants to tell her that he's sitting on her bed. That he broke into her apartment because of an insatiable i need /i to know where she was. He tells her neither, because she begins to speak. Her voice is strong; she has stopped crying.

"I hate what I've become these past few months," she confesses. "Everything's changing. I understand that change is inevitable, and I accept that. But everything's changing, and for the worse. You, me, Chase...even Foreman. The whole team. We're losing the fluidity we had six months ago. It's like we're all tied together, and pulling in different directions." She chuckles self-deprecatingly. "It's a bad metaphor, but...doesn't it bother you?"

"Your metaphor?" he drawls.

"The situation," she replies, and her voice is reprimanding. "I'm not saying that we were all one big happy family, but we were close," she says, "...although some of us are closer than others." Her meaning is not lost on him, but he says nothing. "We were all more than coworkers...we all cared about each other. Now we're all estranged...I want that back."

"Things aren't always black and white," he counters.

"But not everything has to be defined in shades of gray," she insists.

He doesn't have an answer to that. She has the courtesy not to act smug about having bested him.

"I'm not as naïve as you think," she states matter-of-factly, and he thinks she's saying it to herself as much as him. "It's not foolish optimism to want things to go back to the way they were."

"It's nostalgia."

"It's logic," she says. "If something has been obtained, then it can be obtained again. Simple deduction. Optimistic, if you must, but the 'foolish' aspect is notably absent. I'm surprised that you haven't thought about this...you seem to hate change more than I." A pause, a deep breath, and she lets everything go. "I'll be at work tomorrow morning."

She doesn't say goodbye, and it takes a moment to realize that even though he's still holding the phone to his ear, she's no longer on the line.

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_Life's more complicated than who gets to the finish line first._

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He flips his phone closed and pushes himself off of the bed, straightening the bedspread before walking out of her bedroom and into the living area. The rain has let up, and while it hasn't stopped completely, the thunder has long since moved on. His eyes fall on the recently-opened letter on the coffee table, and he smirks. Limping over to the table, he snatches the envelope and folds it, shoving it into his pocket next to his lock-picking kit. He pauses only once more on his way out of the apartment to reset the lock before pulling the door closed behind him.


End file.
